Impacts Of Public Policies On Schooling In Developing Contexts

The literature on the impact of school expansionary policies has been extensively studied in various contexts. However, there is limited research on school contractionary policies and the impact of school access on children with disabilities. In my dissertation, I analyze the effects of a school consolidation policy on enrollment and achievement outcomes, and also of the right to education on enrollment among children with disabilities. In Chapter 2, I examine the impact of vertical school consolidation on school choice, dropouts, exam taking, and achievement by exploiting its staggered roll-out in the Indian state of Rajasthan. My analysis reveals that consolidation of government grade 1-5 schools with government grade 6-10 schools increases the average school size, number of classrooms, teachers, and grades in government schools. Furthermore, I find that the preference for government schools declines, particularly among grade 1-5 children, and the number of dropouts among grade 1-5 children increases. My results also demonstrate that consolidation does not affect the number of takers or high scorers in primary and middle school completion exams. My heterogeneity analyses show that the impact of consolidation does not vary by gender or by grade within the grade 1-5 or grade 6-8 groups. However, the negative impacts of school consolidation are more pronounced among children from Scheduled Caste households. In Chapter 3, I evaluate the impact of right to education from the passing of Right To Education (RTE) Act in India in 2009. India’s RTE Act guaranteed free education to children aged six to fourteen years including children with disabilities (CWD). Given that school participation deficit associated with disability is large, I provide results which are relieving to policy makers. I use an interrupted time series research design and find that the RTE Act led to a 60 percent increase in schooling among CWD within three years. The estimate is driven by enrollment across all grades. I also provide suggestive evidence that the estimate is not driven by an increase in the number of schools or in disable-friendly ramps within schools.